NBC BANDSTAND
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NBC Bandstand was an easy old time big band radio-televison music show
simulcast weekday mornings in the 1950's with pop tunes, big band favorites
and s...
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James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. (December 18, 1897 – December 29, 1952) was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer,
His was one of the most prolific black musical arrangers and his influence was vast. He was often known as Smack Henderson (apparently due to his college baseball hitting skills). Fletcher is ranked along with Duke Ellington as one of the most influential arrangers and band leaders in jazz history, and helped bridge the gap between the jazz and swing era.WIKIPEDIA

Neal Hefti (October 29, 1922 – October 11, 2008) was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, songwriter, and arranger
He composed the theme music for the Batman television series of the 1960s, and scored the 1968 film The Odd Couple and the subsequent TV series also titled The Odd Couple.
WIKIPEDIA
He began arranging professionally in his teens, when he wrote charts for Nat Towles. He became a prominent composer and arranger while playing trumpet for Woody Herman; while working for Herman he provided new arrangements for "Woodchopper's Ball" and "Blowin' Up a Storm," and composed "The Good Earth" and "Wild Root." After leaving Herman's band in 1946, Hefti concentrated on arranging and composing, although he occasionally led his own bands. He is especially known for his charts for Count Basie such as "Li'l Darlin'" and "Cute".

Horace Heidt and his Musical Knights
Horace Heidt (May 21, 1901–December 1, 1986) was an American pianist, big band leader, and radio and television personality. His band, Horace Heidt and his Musical Knights, toured vaudeville and performed on radio and television through the 1930s and 1940s.WIKIPEDIABorn in Alameda, California, Heidt attended Culver Academies.
From 1932 to 1953, he was one of the more popular radio bandleaders, heard on both NBC and CBS in a variety of different formats over the years. He began on the NBC Blue Network in 1932 with Shell Oil's Ship of Joy and Answers by the Dancers. During the late 1930s on CBS he did Captain Dobbsie's Ship of Joy and Horace Heidt's Alemite Brigadeers before returning to NBC for 1937–39 broadcasts.

Erskine Ramsay Hawkins (July 26, 1914 – November 11, 1993) was an American trumpet player and big band leader
Lionel Hampton, 1908 - 2002
Glen Gray (June 7, 1906 – August 23, 1963) was a jazz saxophonist and leader of the Casa Loma Orchestra.
Gray was born to Lurdie P. and Agnes (Gray) Knoblauch in Roanoke, Illinois. His father was a lifelong railroad worker who died when Glen was two years of age. His widowed mother married George H. DeWilde.
Gray graduated from Roanoke High School. He is said to have joined the Army at seventeen, and two years later he was living at home with his family. He was employed as a bill clerk for the railroad. He attended Illinois Wesleyan University, where he joined Tau Kappa Epsilon, but left to work for the Santa Fe Railroad.
WIKIPEDIA
In 1927, his Orange Blossoms Band was renamed the Casa Loma Orchestra, after Casa Loma in Toronto, where the band played for eight months. Gray collaborated with the jazz musician Jean Goldkette, and with trumpeter/arranger Salvador Camarata. He gave Betty George her first job as a soloist. Ill health forced Gray to retire from touring in 1950. In 1956, he went back into the studio to record the first of what became a series of LPs for Capitol Records, which recreated the sounds of the big band era in stereo.

The Casa Loma Orchestra was a popular American dance band active from 1927 to 1963. From 1929 until the rapid multiplication in the number of swing bands from 1935 on, the Casa Loma Orchestra was one of the top North American dance bands. It did not tour after 1950 but continued to record as a studio group.WIKIPEDIA
Jan Garber (born Jacob Charles Garber, November 5, 1894 – October 5, 1977) was an American jazz bandleader.
Garber was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He had his own band by the time he was 21 (around 1917). He became known as "The Idol of the Airwaves" in his heyday of the 1920s and 1930s, playing jazz in the vein of contemporaries such as Paul Whiteman and Guy Lombardo. Garber played violin with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra after World War I and formed the Garber-Davis Orchestra with pianist Milton Davis from 1921–1924. After parting with Davis, he formed his own orchestra, playing both "sweet" and "hot" 1920s dance music. He was hit hard by the Great Depression, and in the 1930s, he refashioned his ensemble into a big band and recorded a string of successful records for Victor. During World War II, Garber began playing swing jazz, a rather unexpected turn; his arranger during this time was Gray Rains and his vocalist was Liz Tilton. The recording restrictions in America during the war eventually made his ensemble unfeasible, and he returned to "sweet" music after the war, continuing to lead ensembles nearly up until the time of his death in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1977.
WIKIPEDIA

WIKIPEDIA
Bob Florence (May 20, 1932 – May 15, 2008) was an American jazz arranger and pianist.
Florence began taking piano lessons at five and initially intended to be a concert pianist. His direction changed when he was exposed to jazz at Los Angeles City College.
WIKIPEDIA
At the beginning of his career, Florence worked as a pianist and arranger with Dave Pell. He founded his first band in the late 1950s, working with, amongst others, Herb Geller, Bud Shank, Frank Capp and Bob Enevoldsen. Florence later participated in big band projects in the Los Angeles area, working mainly with session musicians and as an accompanist to various singers. Throughout his career, Florence worked as an arranger for Harry James, Louie Bellson, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Count Basie and Doc Severinsen.


Shep Fields (September 12, 1910 – February 23, 1981) was a band leader
Jerry Fielding (June 17, 1922 – February 17, 1980) was an American radio, record, film and television composer, conductor, bandleader, and musical director.
Fielding worked at Pittsburgh’s Stanley Theater (where his fellow players included Erroll Garner, Billy May and Henry Mancini), learning composition and arranging there from the theater's pit orchestra conductor, Max Adkins (as did Mancini and another notable Pittsburgh native, Billy Strayhorn). In June 1941, shortly before his nineteenth birthday, Fielding left Pittsburgh to work for Alvino Rey’s swing band. His arrangement of Picnic in Purgatory in 1942 became highly popular.WIKIPEDIA
This job ended when most of the band was drafted. He was too frail for service. He became vocal arranger for Lucy Ann Polk’s Town Criers and then joined Kay Kyser’s band. He became their chief arranger in 1945. He also arranged for the big bands of Mitchell Ayres, Claude Thornhill, Jimmie Lunceford, Tommy Dorsey, Charlie Barnet and Les Brown.


Maynard Ferguson (May 4, 1928 – August 23, 2006) was a Canadian jazz musician and bandleader.
Walter Maynard Ferguson (May 4, 1928 – August 23, 2006) was a Canadian jazz musician and bandleader. He came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957. He was noted for being able to play accurately in a remarkably high register, and for his bands, which served as stepping stones for up-and-coming talent.
WIKIPEDIA


WIKIPEDIA
Larry Elgart (born March 20, 1922) is an American jazz bandleader
Larry Elgart was born in 1922 in New London, Connecticut, four years younger than his brother, Les. Their mother was a concert pianist; their father played piano as well, though not professionally. Both brothers began playing in jazz ensembles in their teens, and while young Larry played with jazz musicians such as Charlie Spivak, Woody Herman, Red Norvo, Freddie Slack, and Tommy Dorsey.
WIKIPEDIA
In the mid-1940s, Les and Larry started up their own ensemble, hiring Nelson Riddle, Bill Finegan, and Ralph Flanagan to arrange tunes for them. Their ensemble was not successful, and after a few years they scuttled the band and sold the arrangements they had commissioned to Tommy Dorsey. Both returned to sideman positions in various orchestras.


Gil Evans 1912 - 1988
Ian Ernest Gilmore "Gil" Evans (né Green; May 13, 1912 – March 20, 1988) was a Canadian jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader. He played an important role in the development of cool jazz, modal jazz, free jazz and jazz fusion, and collaborated extensively with Miles Davis.
WIKIPEDIA


WIKIPEDIA
Harry Aaron Finkelman (May 26, 1914 – June 26, 1968), aka Ziggy Elman, was an American jazz trumpeter
He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but his family settled in Atlantic City when he was four. His father was a violinist who had hoped Harry would play violin as well. Although he did learn to play the violin, Harry preferred the brass instruments. He began playing for Jewish weddings and nightclubs at age 15, and in 1932 made his first recording where he played trombone. At some point in the decade he adopted the name Ziggy Elman. Elman is a shortening of Finkelman while "Ziggy" is believed to be a reference to Florenz Ziegfeld.
In 1936 Elman joined the Benny Goodman orchestra as a trumpet player after playing briefly with Alex Bertha's local big band at Steel Pier in Atlantic City, where Goodman heard him and was impressed. His 1939 composition "And the Angels Sing," with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, (originally recorded in December 1938 by his own band as an instrumental, "Frailach In Swing") became the number one song in the nation. In 1956 he was asked to recreate his famous frailach solo along with the original vocalist Martha Tilton for the movie, The Benny Goodman Story, but was unable to, his technique having since withered away. Elman appeared performing it in the film, but another trumpeter, Manny Klein, played the solo on the soundtrack. This song is arguably his longest-lasting musical legacy, since it has appeared in films up to 1997 and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1987.
After his work with Goodman, Elman joined Tommy Dorsey's band and also played as a member of the military during the war. He loved frailach music, later known as klezmer, and made a few recordings of such with Mickey Katz. In the period from 1940 to 1947 he was honored in Down Beat magazine's Readers Poll six times.He led his own bands from 1947.

WIKIPEDIA
Mercer Kennedy Ellington (11 March 1919 – 8 February 1996) was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and arranger.
Mercer Ellington was born in Washington, DC, the son of the composer, pianist, and bandleader Duke Ellington and Edna Thompson. By the age of eighteen he had written his first piece to be recorded by his father ("Pigeons and Peppers").
WIKIPEDIA
In 1939, 1946–1949, and 1959 he led his own bands, many of whose members went on to play with his father, or to achieve independent fame (notably Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Dorham, Idrees Sulieman, Chico Hamilton, Charles Mingus, and Carmen McRae). During the 1940s in particular he wrote pieces that became standards, including "Things Ain't What They Used to Be", "Jumpin' Punkins", "Moon Mist", and "Blue Serge". He also wrote the lyrics to Hillis Walters' popular song, "Pass Me By" (1946), which was recorded by Lena Horne, Carmen McRae and Peggy Lee.


Gerald Wilson 1918 - 2014
WIKIPEDIA
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist and bandleader of jazz orchestras.
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